Farewell to the Father of Roleplaying

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Okay – this is oddly uncorroborated by larger news sources as yet, but as the sad tidings originated just hours ago as a posting from the head of Troll Lord Games, his current publisher, they’re very likely true.

Gary Gygax, the co-creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has passed away, aged just 69. He had been seriously ill for some time.

Would we ever have had PC RPGs without Gygax’s laying down of roleplaying foundations back in 1974? Oh, probably – in some form, anyway. But would we have had Ultima, Fallout, Diablo, World of Warcraft, even Deus Ex? Probably not. Baldur’s Gate, Neverwinter Nights and Planescape Torment? Definitely not.

That totally sucks. D&D (that is, AD&D 1st ed.) was my gateway into RPGs, LARPs, and all sorts of fun stuff. The recent stuff from WotC pales in comparison to the classic role-play gaming that Gygax once provided us. In fact, it was the ability to play a game that let me make my own adventures that drew me towards the gaming industry.

From the original D&D boxes to AD&D, I then moved on to countless works of fantasy fiction and then to video gaming that cunningly obfuscated all those pesky rules. He pretty much started it all for me, respect to the man and best wishes for his family.

This man’s legacy is staggering. I feel I should do something to commemorate the loss but nothing seems quite right. Also, I’m trying to decide whether these jokes are in bad taste or the only right thing to do…

Boo! – that’s affected me way more than I thought it would. I played D&D for 10 years straight as a kid / adolescent and it got me through some tough times.

Gary Gygax – in the years before the internet (1981) when I started playing D&D – it was as if Gary was a mysterious, obscure but benign god bringing an exciting and foreign culture to depressed, grey, early-eighties Britain. As an 8 year old his weird name alone was enough to transport me to Greyhawk or the Grand Duchy of Karameikos or The Keep on the Borderlands.

I spent hours poring over the D&D bestiary books as a young ‘un, which were certainly instrumental in getting me hooked on zoology. Reptiles in particular, of course, though I’ve yet to find any fire-, ice- or acid-breathing kinds yet. Another example of gaming having a much wider influence than it’s given credit for. Rest in Peace Sir.

I’ve never bought into the idea that computer games owe very much to pen and paper games, any more so than, say, pinball.

A lot of enthusiast amateurs started trying to make simulations of them, which then evolved into a completely separate medium.

I have no doubt that the games mentioned would have emerged without D&D. Games like Bioshock and Deus Ex would probably have more interesting things in the world and fewer things that boiled down to different percentages of effectiveness against different resistances.